Introduction of Siebel CRM Systems

Siebel CRM Systems, Inc. was a software company principally engaged in the design, development, marketing, and support of customer relationship management (CRM) applications. The company was founded by Thomas Siebel and Patricia House in 1993. At first known mainly for its sales force automation products, the company expanded into the broader CRM market. By the late 1990s, Siebel Systems was the dominant CRM vendor, peaking at 45% market share in 2002

On September 12, 2005, Oracle Corporation announced it had agreed to buy Siebel Systems for $5.8 billion.Siebel is now a brand name owned by Oracle Corporation.

Siebel Systems, Inc. began in sales force automation software, then expanded into marketing and customer service applications, including CRM. From the time it was founded in 1993, the company grew quickly. Benefiting from the explosive growth of the CRM market in the late 1990s, Siebel Systems was named the fastest growing company in the United States in 1999 by Fortune magazine. With the growth of electronic commerce, Siebel formed strategic alliances and made several acquisitions to provide e-business solutions for CRM and related areas. One reason for Siebel’s success was its ability to form alliances; as of late 2000 the company had more than 700 alliance partners.

Siebel Systems competed directly with Oracle and SAP. These competing software suites gradually developed HR, Financial and ERP packages that were readily integrated and thus did not require specialists to deploy, enabling them to steadily erode Siebel’s market share.

History

1993: Siebel Systems, Inc. is founded by Thomas Siebel and Patricia House.

The independent technology and market research company,Forrester, has released its latest CRM rankings and they still show that SAP and Oracle’s Siebel application are still the market leaders. The report does show that the gap between the two CRM heavyweights and the rest of the CRM offerings is narrowing. Those applications gaining ground includeSalesforce.com, CDC, RightNow and Microsoft.

One surprise in the Forrester report was the appearance of CDCwhich purchased Pivotal CRM a number of years ago. However other CRM products that were popular such as Consona andEpiphany were missing from the rankings. For midsized businesses, SAP and Siebel are also seen as market leaders but there are a number of other CRM applications that are popular in the sector such as Sugar, NetSuite and Sage.

Siebel Configuration for Standard
Integrations

Before you can use any of the standard integrations, you must first configure the data elements that
are common to all of the standard integrations. This configuration involves setting SAP configuration
data within the Siebel environment. The standard integration workflows and maps can use this
information during transformation of data between the Siebel application and SAP.
The steps necessary for adding the SAP data to the Siebel application are:

Changing Siebel LOV Definitions

Specific List of Values (LOV) definitions are predefined to support the setup of the required SAP
Configuration data in the Siebel application.

Adding Integration Administration Data

Integration administration data represents the SAP sales enterprise structure in the Siebel database.
An SAP sales area and an SAP plant map to a Siebel organization. An SAP plant has a representation
as a specific Inventory Location type in the Siebel application.

Mapping SAP Sales Areas

The Business Components used in the Siebel SAP standard integration are enabled for usage in a
Multi Organization environment (such as BC Account, Internal Product, Inventory Location, and so
on). By default an organization is assigned to those business components. Make sure that the default
Siebel organization is synchronized with your SAP sales enterprise structure.

NOTE: This procedure requires the simultaneous use of the SAP and Siebel applications. The steps
in this procedure indicate when to switch applications.

To map SAP Sales Areas to Siebel Organizations

1 In the Siebel application, navigate to Administration – Integration.

2 Select SAP Administration.

3 Select Organization SAP Sales Areas if it is not already selected.

Installing Siebel Connector for SAP R/3
on Windows for a UNIX-Based Siebel
Enterprise

If your enterprise installation uses a mix of UNIX-based and Windows-based servers, you can
implement Siebel Connector for SAP R/3 and share the connection within the enterprise. The Siebel
Connector for SAP R/3 must be installed and implemented on a Windows-based server.

Prerequisite for Installing Siebel Connector for SAP R/3 on a Mixed
Operating System

Install Samba on the AIX or Solaris server. This makes the AIX and Solaris files accessible to the
Windows servers.

Installing Siebel Connector for SAP R/3 on a Mixed Operating System

Use the following high-level steps to integrate the mixed environment.

To install Siebel Connector for SAP R/3 for mixed operating system enterprises